‘When are we going? When are we going?’ Brace was saying that. Impatient.
‘I’ve got a gym to run.’ This from Miller.
Ward: ‘Those patio sets aren’t going to sell themselves, you know.’
The boys wanting him to go. McGregor clearly wanting him to go.
Whatever. None of that really mattered. What mattered was the operation. The objective. And yes, he had to admit that they were as ready as they would ever be. He had to admit that it was time to move.
He told the lads. ‘Operation is go for tomorrow.’
He spoke to McGregor again. ‘It’s tonight.’
‘Tonight. OK.’
‘Is there any way we can be sure that Cynthia will be absent?’
‘I can do my best to find out her movements.’
‘Do that. And at the same time, make sure that you’re as far away as possible.’
‘Will do.’
‘Oh, and McGregor? We’ll be needing the money as soon as the job is over. Is that clear? I’ll need it splitting three ways and transferring to three account numbers that I’ll provide to you.’
‘I’ll be in touch with Kilgore and see that it’s done.’
‘Excellent. I’ll be seeing you, McGregor.’
And I’ll deal with you later.
CHAPTER 37
‘Mrs Doyle?’
‘McGregor. What do you want?’
‘Just that me and the lads are planning a bit of a surprise for the boss man tonight, for the anniversary like.’
‘What anniversary is that, then?’
‘You remember when we took over the drugs business from Kemp?’
‘No, not really. Why?’
‘Well, that’s the anniversary.’
‘What? And we’re celebrating that, are we?’
‘We are now, aye. Me and the boys thought it would be good to mark the boss man’s achievement. We are having a little get-together. It’d be great to see you and the boy here for, say, about seven o’clock tonight just before he clocks off for the night?’
‘Are you sure about this? Ray doesn’t normally go in for this sort of thing.’
‘Aye, I’m sure. So we’ll see you there?’
‘Yes, McGregor. I’ll see you there.’
CHAPTER 38
Abbott stole a van and changed the plates. He returned to the Welcome Break, parked up and called Ward. ‘I’m in the car park,’ he said.
‘Roger that. I’ll pass the message along.’
Ward was the first to appear. He climbed into the passenger seat of the van and then over the seats into the rear, where he unzipped the holdall to reveal the all-too-familiar black Nomex overalls as well as his chest rig full of the necessary toys for the job: ammo, flash bangs, smoke and a radio with throat mic and earpiece. Last but not least, a balaclava, gloves and NVGs.
From his holdall he took his FN-Scar with suppressor and laser dot sight and began to complete the assembly. Abbott watched him in the mirror, reflecting on how Ward had shed his garden centre, almost farmer-like skin, to become an SF operator again.
Ward pulled on the overalls, followed by the chest rig and placed his balaclava under the flap of one of his ammo pouches, his black Nomex gloves under another, easily accessible. Finally, he threw on his jacket to cover up the fact he was about to unleash hell in the dark of the night. Not a word was exchanged, no thought required. There was no need.
As Ward did that, Miller had appeared from the entranceway of the hotel. Like Ward he was dressed casually, but after clambering into the van began the same drill, prepping so that as soon as they were in position, the operation could begin.
Third came Brace. Again the same routine. But this time, as soon as Tom was in the van, Abbott set off, bypassing Derby itself, going straight to the outskirts and to the industrial estates. He had checked the van, confirmed that all the lights were working and that the tyres were in good order even before he nicked it. Now, driving, he kept to the speed limits, ensuring he did nothing to attract attention.
They drove along the dual carriageway, past the industrial estates and car dealerships and then past the approach road to Kemptown. There, Abbott got a quick visual, the barrier set-up there as always, two vans parked back-to-back, the wasteland on either side.
Further along, they took an exit off the dual carriageway, conducted a full circuit at the roundabout before taking a left, observing to see if any vehicles followed the same manoeuvre, then pulled off onto a service road where a sign said, ‘Not Suitable for Motor Vehicles’. Further down was a gate that, two days ago, Ward and Miller had secured with a chain and a padlock. Abbott stopped the van, Ward and Miller disembarked, Ward confirming that the chain hadn’t been tampered with and checking that the stick they’d placed in the tracks wasn’t broken.
‘Clear?’ asked Abbott when they returned.
‘Apart from us, not a soul has been here.’
‘Excellent.’
They drove through, set a sensor on the gate behind them and then moved on until they reached the designated area, a derelict building identified by Ward and Miller during the CTR phase. It had once been some kind of industrial lock-up but was now overgrown with vegetation. An elevated position that overlooked the Kemptown compound, that was hidden from the road and not covered by CCTV. Close enough for Brace to work his magic, for full comms coverage but far away enough not to attract attention from the Doyle crew. All that and a flat roof.
They drove the van inside, got out and made their way up the metal stairway to the roof. Brace took his sniper rifle with its NV scope and positioned himself in the pre-determined location giving the best field of view. Abbott placed his throat mic on and then attached a tactical comms headset, ‘All call signs radio check.’
‘Mike One, good to me, over.’
‘Tango One, good to me over. Whiskey One, good to me, over.’
‘All call signs, this is Alpha, good to me, out.’
Communication, they all knew, was the lifeblood of mission success.
The others did the same, tested the link. The voices in his ear sounded familiar and intimate and took him back to his time in SF so that for a second it was like slipping into a warm bath, a world in which he felt comfortable within its constant threat. Was there something wrong with him that he had to pull on a balaclava and an assault rifle on a strap before he felt fully human? Perhaps. Then again, perhaps he should fully interrogate that another time, because right now there was just him, his team, and the objective.
Only the objective.
Abbott joined Brace on the roof with his binoculars. Brace had a good sight of the approach road and the barrier. It was precisely why the location had been chosen. His visual was of the two vans parked end to end. Both men were in the cab of a van that faced them, which right away wasn’t great.
They also had the distraction of the flip-up phones they held, thumbs moving furiously, either playing a game or texting.
‘They’ve changed position. CTR had them using the other van, facing away from this position,’ said Brace. ‘It’s one of the reasons we chose it.’
‘Change of sentries. This lot probably prefer a different van. It’s no reflection on Ward or Miller. No CTR should ever dictate fact over flexibility.’
Abbott kept his cool when inside he was wincing. The over-sight – because at the end of the day, and for whatever reason, that’s what it was – meant they had to approach from the front. Not ideal, but then again, the SF team had stealth, surprise and the cover of a dark, almost moonless night on their side. Added to that, both sentries were seemingly absorbed in their mobile phones.
‘We still operational?’ asked Brace.
‘Nothing changes,’ said Abbott, ‘You know what to do.’ Pulling his balaclava over his face, he headed down the stairs and made his way back to the ground. ‘All call signs, prepare to move.’
CHAPTER 39
‘What the fuck is going on here?’ barked Doyle. He looked up, angrily stu
bbing out a cigarette as his office unexpectedly began to fill with people, including—
‘Cynthia! What the fuck are you doing here? Finn? McGregor?’
‘Today is the day, boss,’ said McGregor. He was holding a cake on which was written the words ‘King of Derby’.
Doyle lit another cigarette. ‘What day?’ He was beginning to redden. ‘What’s going on? Will someone please tell me what’s going on?’
‘Calm down, darling,’ squeaked Cynthia Doyle. ‘It’s just a little surprise, that’s all.’ Behind her, Marky had entered the room with a platter full of lager and Cynthia needed no invitation to reach out and pluck one for herself. ‘Me and Mac decided that we should have a little celebration to mark the fact that it’s – how many years?’ Brow furrowed, she looked to McGregor.
His eyes darted.
‘Och, five years I think, Mrs Doyle.’
‘Five years since what?’ said Doyle angrily, half-rising from his desk, the cigarette jammed between his lips. There was the crack and fizz as more tins of lager were opened, the sight and sound of which only enraged him further.
‘Five years since we defeated the Kemps,’ said Cynthia. ‘Five years since you became . . .’ her hand swept across the cake presented by McGregor, ‘King of Derby.’
Angrily, Doyle stubbed out his cigarette in the middle of the cake. ‘You have got to be fucking kidding me,’ he said. Growing redder and redder.
Cynthia realised that she had made a mistake and turned to McGregor, planning to demand an answer.
Weirdest thing, though: McGregor, far from being contrite or terrified by the sudden volcanic anger of her husband, looked as though he was trying to suppress a smile.
CHAPTER 40
Abbott, Ward and Miller used the cover of darkness to cross a field, keeping to the perimeter until they came to a wire fence. Across an expanse of barren land was the approach road leading to the Doyle factory. They hunkered down. Abbott looked back and could see nothing of the building where Tom Brace sat ready and waiting.
‘Confirm visuals,’ he whispered.
‘No visual on you. Visuals on targets one and two,’ came the reply from Brace.
‘Ward. Miller. Standby,’ said Abbott.
Ward confirmed, pushing himself further into the dirt as Abbott and Miller got to their feet and began to move across the scrubland. Ahead of them was the sentry van, some 200 yards away, the faces of the two sentries illuminated by their phones.
Off to their right, the cluster of factory buildings was a grey against the black night. Even with the darkness as their ally, they still felt exposed, pleased to reach the relative safety of an abandoned sofa that lay about halfway between his original position and the van.
‘Visuals,’ Abbott whispered into the mic.
‘No change,’ replied Brace.
Abbott checked his Omega. He wore it always, but somehow it seemed more right here than elsewhere. ‘We wait,’ he instructed. ‘We wait for nature to take its course.’
‘Roger that.’
As they lay behind the sofa, the evening growing noticeably colder around them, Abbott reflected on the fact that this was not the first time he had waited for a guard to take a piss. It was not the first time that a guard’s need to urinate would spell his end.
Twenty minutes or so he waited, and then Brace whispered in his ear, ‘Target is on the move.’
‘Which one?’
‘Target number one as far as I can tell,’ said Brace, which was good. According to surveillance, number one was the more shy of the two sentries and tended to move slightly further away to enjoy a piss.
‘OK, standby. I’m going silent. Keep talking to me. I’ll signal for the killshot.’
‘Roger that.’
Keeping low and moving silently, Abbott and Miller crossed the remaining wasteland with an eye on the cab of the van, where target number two continued to look at his phone. A short distance away, target number one was still having his piss.
Abbott could smell cigarette smoke coming from the open passenger window of the van. Miller held fast in support and carefully, he let the FN-Scar drop to its strap and then crabbed his way around the cab of the van so that he was almost directly below the passenger window.
‘Waiting for the signal,’ said Brace in his ear. ‘He’s not going to be all night, Abbott, it’s only a piss.’
Inside the van, target number two had responded to the squawk of a walkie-talkie. ‘Yeah,’ he said.
‘Fucking going nuts over here,’ came a voice.
Crouched below, Abbott’s ears pricked up.
‘What do you mean?’ said number two.
‘I mean, the boss is screaming blue murder in his office.
Everyone’s in there. Some kind of anniversary.’
What anniversary? thought Abbott. McGregor never mentioned an anniversary.
In his ear, Brace sounded a little urgent. ‘He’s finishing up, Abbott. He’s shaking. I need to take the shot.’
Abbott reached into his boot and fingered out the Gerber knife. He took a deep breath, completely in the zone now, thinking only of the operation in terms of its main objectives, its mini-objectives, the targets that formed those objectives.
He gave the signal.
There was no sound. Nothing apart from a soft thump as the bullet made contact, followed by the sound of target number one dropping dead to the dirt with Brace’s bullet in his head. A flawless killshot.
At the same time, Abbott stood and brought his left arm into the window of the van, across the front of target two, grabbing him and plunging the Gerber knife through the same window and into his ear.
Target two’s eyes went wide, viscous blood and brain fluid leaked from his ear onto Abbott’s gloves. He slumped forward.
Abbott withdrew his gloved hands. Objective achieved. Both targets down. What’s more, Abbott now had one of their radios. From a compartment in his own headset he extracted a cable that he snapped into the walkie-talkie, able now to hear any enemy comms traffic.
Not that there was any. It was silent. He listened for a while. Number two’s mate had obviously gone to enjoy more of the anniversary.
But what anniversary?
‘Clear,’ said Abbott into the mic. ‘Reorg on me.’
In moments, Ward and Miller had joined him at the vans. Abbott pushed the Gerber back into his boot and they pulled the bodies out of sight. He picked the FN-Scar up on its strap and began running along the approach road. To his right, the dark shapes of Ward and Miller, Ward with his bag of magic tricks on his back, both with their rifles in their arms.
The three men reached the unused buildings on the outer reaches of the complex. This was the kind of combat environment in which they’d all trained, and all were comfortable covering angles and working corners as they moved up. To the right was the target vehicle in the car park, and Abbott watched as Ward peeled off towards it, hunkering down by it, and went to work setting the first of his explosives. As well as the main factory building, in which Doyle’s office was based, there were three other outbuildings: one that was once offices and administration, one that might once have been a workshop, and one that was probably a canteen. Right now, Abbott was by the canteen. He rose up slightly to peer through the window and saw what looked like a makeshift dormitory for kids. Evidently, they’d been gravitating here to sleep and rest and even though it was relatively early, there were – he counted – five kids in there now, two of whom were lying down probably asleep, two playing some kind of game with their hands, and one who sat with her back to the wall, staring vacantly into space.
‘Alpha One,’ said Brace in his ear, ‘I have a target on the move.’
Abbott’s first thought on hearing that was, At last. Given that McGregor had warned him about Doyle’s increased paranoia, pulling more and more men onto the site, he had been wondering why more of them weren’t visible.
‘Do you have eyes on me?’ he whispered back to Brace.
‘Affi
rmative. Target is approaching your twelve, other side of the building.’
Probably coming to check on the kids. Or for some other reason.
‘Alone?’
‘So far. Approaching your position.’
‘Do you have a clear shot?’
‘Better if you can take it.’
Abbott hand-signalled to Miller, identifying the threat. They both crabbed forward, lifting their weapons in the ready position. Abbott as point man peered quickly around the side of the building, establishing a visual on the approaching guard and confirming that he was alone. He withdrew, counting in his head.
At the same time, he saw something else – but something that didn’t require his immediate attention. His brain compartmentalising now, as he eased off the safety, slipped a gloved finger through the trigger guard.
‘Standby,’ said Brace in his ear, and Abbott slipped out of his position, onto one knee, tucking the FN-Scar into his shoulder and squinting through the scope, finding his target, doing all of it in a quarter of a second, squeezing the trigger, two shots in quick succession to the chest followed by a single shot to the head.
The target, spun around by the three shots, folded to the ground. Abbott dropped the rifle to its strap, moved quickly forward and dragged the body into the shadow of the canteen. Miller covered his every move with the precision of a perfectly synchronised dance partner.
The dead guy was a young bloke in his mid-twenties but the butt of a pistol protruded from his track pants and Abbott felt nothing. No sympathy. No remorse. Just the sense of a job completed. The guy was just another kill. Another soul to meet on the other side. Abbott had shot first, that was all.
‘Sitrep?’ he said to Brace, taking up the rifle again and covering himself, sweeping the barrel around in quadrants, seeing just darkness – darkness and buildings, but nothing else, which meant that either the enemy presence had been drastically reduced since – when was the last recce? – that morning, or all of Doyle’s men were concentrated in . . . where?
The main factory building?
All Or Nothing Page 16